Fjordman

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

The Death of Samira Munir - Accident, Murder or Suicide?

This is a sensitive topic, but I believe it needs to be talked about. Samira Munir, Norwegian politician of Pakistani origins, died two weeks ago. All the details surrounding her death have not been revealed, but the police have hinted that it may have been suicide. It is not impossible that this could be the case, but she had received death threats many times from the Pakistani community in Norway because of her courageous fight for the rights of Muslim immigrant women, and for banning hijab, the Islamic veil. Regardless of what caused her death, it is a fact that she received far too little support from Norwegian authorities and even her own party, who were afraid that her outspoken defence of women's rights could cost them Muslim votes and damage the country's glossy, Multicultural self-image. Her death thus puts this country to shame. She was a brave woman, and will be missed. May she rest in peace. The following text is not written by me, but by Norwegian Islam-critic Prithivi from Antipsykopatisk Senter, and was posted at the forum of Faith Freedom International:

Of Pakistani origin, Samira Munir proclaimed herself to be a muslim. She was not, however, your average muslim woman, not by a long shot. For those familiar with Irshad Manji, the Canadian author who wrote the book The Trouble With Islam and runs the website Muslim Refusenik Samira Munir can probably be best described as a Norwegian counterpart or equivalent of Irshad Manji. Samira spoke relentlessly and very courageously for the rights of women in the muslim immigrant community in Norway, how they were faced with threats of forced marriages, so called honour-killings and female sexual mutilation. She also warned Norwegian politicians of dire consequences of their neglect and indifference. As a matter of fact she entered politics herself. she was elected to the municipal assembly in Oslo as a representative for The Conservatives. As one would expect she received no support whatsoever in her struggle for the rights of muslim immigrant women. Quite the contrary, one of her party colleagues, a real muslim, threatened her with a lawsuit for some of her statements. Rumours have it that within the party she was not looked upon favourably at all, they feared that her outspoken critics of muslim leaders may cost them muslim votes. Her proposals to improve the conditions for muslim women in Norway were continuously sabotaged and backstabbed by the rest of the party, including a proposal to copy the French ban on hijab i public schools. She spoke about how muslim girls who in public said they wore hijab of their own free will in private confided in her that they were being forced and threatened to do so, and urged her to carry on being a voice for those who had neither the possibility nor the courage to speak for themselves.

In several interviews she told that she was being harassed and receiving death threats, not only against herself, but also against her family. Then, on November 14, 2005, the website of Human Rights Service brought the shocking news that Samira had died under circumtannces which still seem mysterious, to say the least. The story was that she had been run over by a train at a station on one of the suburban lines in Oslo. For someone who recently had claimed she was receiving almost daily death threats this seemed highly suspicious. It was made even more suspicious by the fact that the PC media in Norway for several days did not mention by a single word what had happened. Earlier the same day as she was killed she had participated in a radio discussion where she defended the ban on hijab in universities in Turkey. After several days the mainstream Norwegian media eventually broke the story, but in a very muted way. Between the lines they kind of suggested that she had taken her own life, and that out of “respect” one should not try and dig deeper into the story. Although the mainstream media hardly reported the case at all there has of course been a lot of discussions about it in Norwegian internet forums. Many seem convinced that she was murdered by some Norwegian muslims who pushed her into the track as a train was passing. Some suggest she was doped and placed on the tracks to await an arriving train. The latter is based on the fact that one report claimed she was killed between two stations, rather than at a particulalar station. Considering all the hatred and all the threats she had received from muslims in Norway that does not seem unlikely, to say the least. The fact that the Pakistani ambassador had summoned her twice may even suggest that the Pakistani ISI (Interservice Intelligence) was involved.

There are many uncertainties about Samira’s tragic death. But even if it was a suicide it does not add up. A healthy 42 year old women, and the mother of two, does not just jump in front of a train for no reason. As a matter of fact there has to be a very good reason. If that is what actually happened we will probably never know the true reason in detail, but a few facts we do know. We know that both she and her family were being harassed and received death threats, and we know she was being very concerned about the development of the muslim immigrant community in Norway, becoming ever more radical and extremist. The pressure against her, and the bleak outlook for the future can surely be enough to drive a person to commit suicide, and the lack of support from within the conservative party most certainly did not make it any better. So even if the final act was one of her own choosing her blood remains on the hands of Norwegian muslims and their islamophile friends in the conservative party.

A member of Oslo's City Council who was born in Pakistan but now holds Norwegian citizenship has twice been called to Pakistan's local embassy. Both times, Pakistan's ambassador to Norway questioned her political standpoints, and now Norway's foreign minister Jan Petersen has been told that she felt pressured. The two calls from Pakistan's ambassador to City Council member Samira Munir have raised eyebrows. It's highly unusual for a Norwegian citizen to be asked to meet up in another country's embassy to draft political issues with an ambassador. "It crosses the line, to put it mildly, if pressure is put on our politicians," said the city's top elected politician Erling Lae. "An embassy has nothing to do with what a politician on Oslo's City Council may believe." Lae, Petersen and Munir all hail from Norway's Conservative Party (Hoeyre). Munir has lived in Norway since the early 1970s and has been a Norwegian citizen for more than 20 years. The calls from Pakistan's embassy came after Munir became the first known Muslim woman in Norway to support a proposed ban on the use of head scarves and other religious symbols for youth. She then became a target of criticism within the local Pakistani community. She declined to comment on the issue after receiving several anonymous and bothersome phone calls. Newspaper Aftenposten Aften understands that Pakistan's ambassador, Shahbaz Shahbaz, noted in his second meeting with Munir that she still has family in Pakistan. Shahbaz confirmed he has had two meetings with Munir in his office since she went public with her position on religious head scarves called hijab in February. They had no contact prior to that point.

The Battle for France

France is not exceptional. Police officers and firemen are used to having stones thrown at them in Western Europe’s immigrant neighborhoods as a normal part of their daily routine. This is what Andrew Osborn of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer wrote after visiting Borgerhout, the largely Moroccan suburb of the Flemish city of Antwerp, in December 2002: “Outsiders aren’t welcome. ‘Go home before we beat your f------g white ass,’ is how one group of young men greet The Observer. Passing police cars are bombarded with a barrage of expletives and spittle.” Here is what Rolf Landgren, a police officer in the Swedish town of Malmö, told Steve Harrigan of Fox News in November 2004: “If we park our car it will be damaged—so we have to go very often in two vehicles, one just to protect the other vehicle.” Fear of violence has changed the way police, firemen, and emergency workers do their jobs, explained Harrigan. There are some neighborhoods Swedish ambulance drivers will not go to without a police escort.

These examples, unknown to Americans but all too familiar to many Europeans, show how for years virtual no-go areas have been forming in Old Europe. The areas were abandoned by left-leaning authorities intent on not “provoking” the immigrants with police presence. These pockets of Eurabia are scattered across the western part of the continent. Some of the gangs consist of Islamic radicals, some are plain mafia gangs engaging in “secular” criminal activities, some are a mixture of both. Whenever right-wing law-and-order politicians try to reassert the state’s authority over their territories, heavy rioting follows. Indeed, it is more convenient to think that the cause of the riots is plain thuggishness resulting from discrimination on the job market. The poor natives who live in the immigrants’ neighborhoods know better, however. They know that the generals of Eurabia, the leaders of the “youths,” drive BMWs and Mercedes (which no-one dares to set alight), and that they use mobile phones and PCs to instruct their highly mobile troops. The war in France is not about social injustice, but about territory.

The Luckiest Generation - With apologies to my children

This has to be the most pessimistic essay I've read to date. I'm not sure whether this is the end of European civilization, but it is definitely the end of an era. And yes, we will face some very troubling times for several decades until a new era can begin:

Born between VE Day and VJ Day, I missed all the greatest horrors of the 20th century. If granted a normal lifespan**, I shall miss the horrors of the 21st, too. If my parents' generation was the greatest, mine has been the luckiest. For that, in this Thanksgiving season, I give sincere and heartfelt thanks. Government is hopelessly broken. Though far larger now than in 1957, it does less, and it does that less very badly. Its most elementary functions — defending our borders, keeping a thrifty eye on the national wealth, apprising us of what our enemies are up to — are no longer performed to any effect. These failures themselves are only symptoms of some more profound civilizational sickness. Western — let us be blunt about it: white-European — civilization is on its way out. If you make a study of any aspect of cultural history — I have just finished a book on one such topic — you are struck by the towering achievements of Europeans and their offspring cultures during the 19th century (which lasted from 1815 to 1914). What went before was mere prologue; what came after were futile, frustrated attempts to re-heat the soufflé. There is of course a sense in which the horrors of 1914-1945 were themselves a product of19th-century overconfidence. Once we had got all that out of our system, though, and found the point of balance, the later 20th century was set to be a garden of delights for those of us in free nations. So much was this so, we did not notice that we were romping through that garden in a deepening twilight.

If I compare my own life to the lives of my parents, and to the prospects for my children, I am struck by my immense good fortune in having been born when and where I was. I was actually born early on a Sunday morning, in a nursing home behind St. Matthew's church in Northampton, England, three weeks after VE Day. I was fit and ready. Lucky! Lucky! Lucky! I can't believe my kids will have that kind of luck. The welfare state, which provided my education, no longer works — not for them, not for anybody. (I sometimes marvel at how well it did work to lift up the deserving poor in the years after WWII. Don't laugh; it really did.) I shall have to beggar myself to put the little Derbs through college, and they will likely still end up with huge debts. There will be no 9-to-5 jobs for them to go to after graduation, quite possibly no jobs at all other than in government work. To my kids I should like to say: I am sorry to have brought you into this mess. There were no bells ringing, no bands playing, at either of your births, and it would have been a travesty if there had been. Even the wisest of us — people like your Dad, I mean — live in part by instinct, and there is no instinct stronger than the one that prompts us to continue the species; so here you are. I am sorry, sorry. There was the Greatest Generation. Then there was ours, the Luckiest. Yours will be the Saddest. Quite possibly — so far as this civilization is concerned, at any rate — it will be the Last. I shall continue to do my best for you as long as I can, but... après moi le Deluge.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Norway: A year of centennial festivities

Photo from Aftenposten. Norway celebrates 100 years as an independent state this year. The final part of the centennial took place now in November, marking the referendum that elected Prince Carl of Denmark to become Norwegian king Haakon 7. The dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway was rather unique in Europe by 1905, as it was done peacefully. Two popular referendums were held in Norway, one establishing independence, the other the choice of the new state being a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic. Both king Haakon and his young son, the future king Olav, were born in Denmark. Our present king Harald, Haakon's grandson, is thus the first Norwegian-born king in more than 600 years:

The tradition of Norwegian kingship in various forms stretches back more than a thousand years. In more recent times the country was united with Denmark from 1381 to 1814 and with Sweden from 1814 until 1905 when it once more became independent under Haakon VII of Norway. The list of kings begins with Harald Fairhair (c.865-c.933) who was acclaimed king of all Norway, according to Snorre Sturlason, the Icelandic saga-writer and historian. In the 14th century the old royal lines in all three Scandinavian kingdoms ended with the death of Olav IV. His mother, Margrete Valdemarsdatter, the only queen-regnant Norway has ever had, succeeded in forging the Kalmar Union, with her nephew as king of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. It was a consolidation of assets which long helped to protect the northern countries from Hansa domination, but it ended with the north divided into two camps: Denmark-Norway and Sweden-Finland. In the Napoleonic wars Denmark sided with France, and lost Norway to England's ally Sweden (which had lost Finland to Russia a few years before).1905 - Dissolution of the Union

The breaking point came with Norway´s demand for separate consuls, a necessary service for a country with the world's fourth largest merchant fleet. The king refused. The Storting then adopted the resolution of 7 June dissolving the union with Sweden. Before accepting dissolution as a fact, the Swedes demanded a public referendum to be certain the Norwegian people agreed with the Storting. As it proved, the national support was massive. In 1905 there was a sizable faction in favour of a republic, but it was more than balanced by the many who believed that monarchy was the form of government most suited to the Norwegian situation. Norway now needed the right man at the helm. Prince Carl of Denmark was 33, the right age to be considered for the role. It was no disadvantage that his wife´s parents were King Edward VII of England and the Danish-born Queen Alexandra. Best of all perhaps was that Prince Carl already had a small son, born in 1903, which meant that the succession was assured. Prince Carl requested the holding of a plebiscite in Norway to decide the future form of government (since a republic would rule out his own involvement) prior to the official offer of the crown. The result of the voting on 12-13 November gave a green light for the new monarchy. On 18 November the solemn election of Prince Carl as king of Norway took place in the Storting, and on the same afternoon the Prince´s telegram of acceptance was read out: "..... I am resolved to accept the election as king of Norway, taking the name of Haakon the seventh and according my son the name of Olav."

June 7th marks the centennial of the peaceful dissolving of the union with Sweden on June 7th 1905. The celebrations mark Norwegian politicians' decision on June 7, 1905 to break out of a union with Sweden that had existed for most of the 1800s. Before that, Norway had been under Danish rule for around 400 years, so the decision meant the formal beginning of an indendence process that lasted until late November, when Norway established its own monarchy and emerged as a sovereign nation. A key issue contributing to the dissolution was Norway's desire for its own consular service for representation overseas. Today, things have come full circle, with Norway and Sweden even sharing some embassies and consular services. The split has been viewed by history as being largely peaceful. In September 1905, in an atmosphere of suspicion, Sweden went so far as to send 5,000 fully-equipped soldiers to the Norwegian border. Norway responded with the partial mobilisation of its army. But with the posturing threatening to burst into conflict, Lundeberg met Norway's leader, Christian Michelsen and they reached a compromise.

Multiculturalism has betrayed the English, Archbishop says

BRITAIN’S first black Archbishop has made a powerful attack on multiculturalism, urging English people to reclaim their national identity. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, said that too many people were embarrassed about being English. “Multiculturalism has seemed to imply, wrongly for me, let other cultures be allowed to express themselves but do not let the majority culture at all tell us its glories, its struggles, its joys, its pains,” he said. He said that the failure of England to rediscover its culture afresh would lead only to greater political extremism. The new Archbishop also strongly criticised the Terrorism Bill. “What is it to be English? It is a very serious question,” he said. “I think we have not engaged with English culture as it has developed. When you ask a lot of people in this country, ‘What is English culture?’, they are very vague. It is a culture that whether we like it or not has given us parliamentary democracy. It is the mother of it. It is the mother of arguing that if you want a change of government, you vote them in or you vote them out.”

It may have been a joke, but some media organizations and politicians in Moscow appear to have taken half-seriously a satirical suggestion that the United States should sell Alaska back to Russia for $1 trillion. The tongue-in-cheek proposal published in a U.S. newspaper raised the vague notion still present here that Russia could one day retrieve the territory it sold to the U.S. The return of Alaska would be marked by a great national holiday, said Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an outspoken nationalist politician. Russia would then have a presence on three continents -- Europe, Asia and America -- noted Zhirinovsky, who is deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament. Last Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a satirical commentary entitled, "Alaska Would Be More at Home in Russia." Vitus Bering, a Danish sea captain serving in the Russian Fleet, and captain Alexey Chirikov claimed Alaska after discovering it in 1741. The Russians established a commercial entity, the Russian-American Company, to capitalize on their new possession. During the Crimean War, British and French fleets attacked and burned Petropavlovsk, the Alaska colony's supply point. As Russia's hold on the territory was threatened, Russian diplomats opted to sell it to friendly Americans than risk having it seized by British foes.Hands off our women, Russian MP tells foreigners

Scandalised by the fact that some of Russia's most beautiful women are opting to marry foreigners, the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky is backing a bill that would make them think twice before exchanging vows with a non-Russian. His party, the incongruously named Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, has drafted a draconian marriage bill that will now be considered by the Duma, the Russian Parliament. It envisages severe penalties for Russian girls or women who choose "unpatriotically" to wed a foreigner, a trend the party believes is robbing the country's gene pool of its greatest resource. It is proposing punishing such female "traitors" by stripping them of their citizenship, deporting them to the country of their new husband and never allowing them to return.

Shamin Mai is in a critical condition in the Bahawal Victoria Hospital in Bahawalpur, a province of Pakistan in the Punjab, adjoining he Indian border. Shamin Mai has had both of her legs chopped off. Her brother Bashir and her uncle Bilal have been arrested for the atrocity. Four others who assisted in the assault have so far avoided arrest. And what motivated this act of barbarity? Shamin Mai, instead of following the course expected of a girl in these regions, of having a marriage arranged for her, had contracted a marriage on her own free will, in Mauza Naseerabad. Among the four assailants still at large one, Faiz Rasool, is a union councillor.France: March For Muslim Woman Set On Fire

Today's Telegraph announces that yesterday, a march was held in Paris, which was organised by the organisation "Ni Putes ni Soumises" (Neither Prostitutes Nor Submissives). The reason for their protest was to voice anger at a cruel attack upon a young woman, and anger at the media's apparent indifference by virtually ignoring the case. The press in France has deliberately played down reporting of recent events, wary to use the term "Muslim" when referring to rioters. This case is perhaps an embarrassment to the French media, as both victim and perpetrator are both Muslim. 18-year old Chahrazad Belayni is in a critical condition, being kept in an artificial coma, after she received severe burns over 60 per cent of her body. On November 13, the Moroccan was walking near her home in Neuilly-sur-Marne in northeastern Paris, when she was attacked. Her attacker was a workmate of Pakistani origin who was incensed that she had earlier refused to marry him. This man and another, believed to be his accomplice, are in hiding somewhere. "This man asked her to marry him three times. He didn't understand her refusals and wouldn't leave her alone," said Sonia, a classmate. "Chahrazad was a beautiful young girl, very soignee (smart,stylish) and coquettish. He hurt her more than most by physically damaging her."

Train rams into reindeer herd

An estimated 40 reindeer were mowed down by a passing train over the weekend after they'd roamed onto the tracks. Half were killed instantly, while nearly 20 had to be put out of their misery. The grisly accident occurred near Vongraven between Røros and Trondheim Saturday afternoon. Newspaper Adresseavisen reported that around 40 reindeer cadavers were left lying along the tracks after the collision. Local reindeer herder Even Danielsen claimed the tragedy could have been avoided if fences along the tracks had been properly maintained. Danielsen told Adresseavisen that the fences previously were maintained by state railway NSB, but responsibility was turned over to the state agency in charge of railroad infrastructure in Norway, Jernbaneverket. He said the fences haven't been maintained for the past 10 to 15 years and have collapsed in several places. He believes Jernbaneverket has a moral obligation to maintain fences along railroad tracks. "They say it's cheaper to pay compensation for animals that are killed, than it is to set up fences," he said. Jernbaneverket officials said the owners of the reindeer would be compensated for the loss of the animals. "We can't manage to fence in all the tracks," said Jernbaneverkets information chief Ellen Svendsvoll.

Denmark: Women still forced into marriage

The hottest potato in Denmark's immigration debate, the so-called 24-year-rule is in the spotlight again after immigrant organisations and consultants reported that it had failed to help young immigrant women to avoid forced marriages. The rule forbids Danish residents to bring their foreign spouses into the country unless both partners have reached a minimum age of 24. The Liberal-Conservative coalition government has said its main purpose is to prevent young people with immigrant backgrounds from being pressed into marriages with people from their families' homelands. Immigrant organs said that on the contrary, the rule was making life even more difficult for immigrant youths with families bent on making a good match for them in the old country. 'Families that practice forced marriages are increasingly using physical and psychological violence to force a spouse upon their marriages. We experience more and more that parents threaten to kill their children if they don't say yes,' said Leif Randeris, leader of the Immigrants' Counselling Services in Copenhagen and Århus. Randeris said every week he usually helped two girls with foreign backgrounds to get a secret address, because they felt that their lives were in danger after they rejected an arranged marriage. He said the 24-year-rule was causing parents to force their daughters to move to their country of origin, because the regulations prevented them from getting their husbands to Denmark. 'I know a number of girls who are now being kept as domestic slaves with their husbands in the village their parents originally came from,' he said.

Parties across the parliamentary spectrum demanded that Liberal Minister of Refugee, Immigration, and Integration Affairs Rikke Hvilshøj launch an investigation of whether the 24-year-rule was working as planned. 'There is nothing to document that the 24-year-rule works,' said Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen, Social Liberal MP and spokesman on immigration affairs. 'The minister must start an investigation on how the rule works, or if it works at all.' The Social Democrats and the Danish People's Party, which have supported the 24-year-rule up until now, said they agreed that an investigation was needed. 'If immigrant consultants say we have a problem, we have to listen to them and investigate if they're right,' said Jesper Langballe, the Danish People's Party's MP and spokesman on immigration affairs. 'I find it hard to believe that there are girls being isolated in their parents' homelands, but it's something we have to check.' Hvilshøj told Politiken that the government had never claimed that the rule would put an end to all forced marriages, and said there were plenty of evidence that the rule was having the effect intended.

Are Muslims the Jews of Today?

Australian Lawyer Stephen Hopper thinks that Muslims are being dehumanized in the public discourse surrounding terrorism, in the same way Nazis dehumanized Jews before World War II. He’s not the only one to see such a connection. Kari Vogt, Norwegian Islam expert at the University of Oslo, has compared Ibn Warraq’s book ”Why I am not a Muslim” to anti-Jewish fabrications “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” Professor Bernt Hagtvet, also from the University of Oslo, sees many parallels, but also some differences. There are far more Muslims in Europe now than there were Jews before WW2, and their numbers are rising fast. Swedish historian of religion Matthias Gardell claims that Islamophobia is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy in the Western world today. Swedish writer and leftist intellectual Jan Guillou has stated that the rhetoric employed by the Nazis against Jews is now used to target Muslims. The Nazis thought that all Jews were part of an international conspiracy to control the world and subdue others in their own lands. Guillou thinks the exact same thing is now happening, only this time, Muslims are the victims of this hate.

The curious thing about this mantra warning against “Islamophobia”, which is now commonplace in the media, is that very few bother to analyze it properly. If they did, they would discover that the Jews of today are, well, Jews. Jews are suffering attacks across much of Western Europe at worse rates than at any time since the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. In Sweden, an anti-Semitic crime is reported to the police once every three days. The Jewish congregations in major cities Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö are forced to spend up to 25 percent of their membership fees on security and hired guards. And most of these hate crimes are perpetrated by Muslims. Even some non-Jews from Sweden say they feel "liberated" when they go to Israel. In Israel, you know who the country's enemies are, and you are prepared to fight for your country and for your convictions. It is hard to overstate the extent to which Sweden is a politically repressed nation, thanks to self-proclaimed guardians of the Multicultural Truth such as Mr. Guillou. No dissent is tolerated, and the few "racists" who try to raise a debate about Muslim immigration are attacked, sometimes even physically.

Jews in the 1930s were a minority everywhere, and had no country they could call their own. Jewish refugees were rejected by many countries even when some of them tried to escape the rise of the Nazis. Muslims today count more than one billion individuals, and constitute the majority in about 60 countries worldwide. In most of these countries, non-Muslims face various levels of discrimination, or even in some the continuous threat of physical extermination. Jews in Western countries do not constitute a terror threat, and never have. Muslims do all the time. Jews do not have a history of more than 1000 years of armed attacks on Europe, India, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Muslims do. Jews do not cut the throats of Buddhist monks in Thailand, massacre Hindus in Bangladesh or stab Christian nuns in Egypt. Muslims do. Jews do not take hostages, decapitate them and distribute videos of their acts. Muslims do. Jews do not gang rape Christian women in Western nations. Muslims do. Jews represent the most prosperous and talented ethnic groups in Europe. Muslims in Europe are ranked close to the bottom of all indicators of education and social achievements. Muslims, being 20 % of the world's population, have produced only three Nobel laureates in science and literature, whereas Jews, being only 0.2% of the world's population, have received more than 120 Nobel prizes in science, economics, medicine and literature. Jews before WW2 filled up Europe’s universities. Muslims now fill up Europe’s prisons.

In fact, the comparisons to the 1930s make a lot more sense if you compare Muslims to the Nazis. And there was a connection, even during WW2. Adolf Hitler is reputed to have stated his admiration for Islam, and thought it would be a better match for Nazism than Christianity, with its stupid notions of compassion for inferior people. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem and the leader of Muslim fundamentalists in Palestine, resided in Berlin as a welcome guest of the Nazis throughout the years of the Holocaust. The Nazi-Islamic love affair remains strong. Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' is a bestseller in Islamic nations such as Turkey, at the same time as Turkish PM Erdogan wants anti-Islamism to be accepted as a crime against humanity in the EU. And not few Muslim leaders state their wish to finish what the Nazis started. Broadcasts from imams in the Palestinian Authority have stated that: “The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew."

In Denmark, professor of Islamic studies Mehdi Mozaffari tells of how he and thousands of others have fled burkas, sharia, blood money, muftis and Islamism in the Middle East, only to witness the same beast rear its ugly head in Europe. And he warns of the consequences: “Historical experience has shown that those people fear will win, eventually. We saw this in Nazi Germany. There were too many Nazis, and people were scared. I fear that this is where we are heading, once more.” Danish author Kåre Bluitgen had difficulties in getting artists to illustrate his book about Muhammad due to fear of reprisals from Islamic extremists. Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest newspaper, responded by asking 40 illustrators to make drawings of Muhammad, and published twelve. The decision has caused a stir among Muslims, triggered threats against the newspaper and a diplomatic row with many Muslim countries that is still going on. The most immediate victims of this climate of fear are Muslim women. A Pakistani man in Denmark recently murdered his sister in the street outside a train station because she had married a man against her family’s orders.

Perhaps worst is the way the experience of Nazism has been turned on its head and used to promote the ideology of Multiculturalism. Any objection to mass immigration or the destruction of traditional Judeo-Christian moral values is deemed as racist, akin to support for fascism. As a result, in the name of Multicultural tolerance, we have allowed the creation of the brutal, anti-democratic monster of Islamism in our midst. It is a bizarre paradox that the hysteria over Nazism has encouraged Europe to be swamped by Islam, in which anti-Semitism appears to be an integral part of the creed. If criticism of Islam causes Muslims to behave badly, then what has 2,000 years of persecution done to the Jews? Surely the Holocaust and other pogroms in Europe would have made Jews start their own Jihad? Then how come Jews don’t go on the rampage throughout Europe? The comparison between Muslims today and Jews 70 years ago is nonsense, and needs to be confronted and dismissed as such. It is an insult to the Buddhists who are beheaded in Thailand, the Christians who are persecuted in Indonesia, the Hindus who are killed in Pakistan and the Europeans who are no longer safe in their own cities. But above all, it is an insult to the memory of the millions of teachers, artists, writers and intellectuals who were murdered in Nazi-controlled Europe.

As one Spanish observer notes, Europe herself may soon pay for having decimated much of her Jewry and replaced them with Muslims:

We assassinated 6 million Jews in order to end up bringing in 20million Muslims!

We burnt in Auschwitz the culture, intelligence and power to create.

We must admit that Europe, by relaxing its borders and giving inunder the pretext of tolerance to the values of a fallaciouscultural relativism, opened it's doors to 20 million Muslims, oftenilliterates and fanatics that we could meet, at best, in placessuch as Raval, the poorest of the nations and of the ghettos, andwho are preparing the worst, such as the 9/11 and the Madridbombing and who are lodged in apartment blocs provided by the socialwelfare.

We also have exchanged culture with fanaticism, the capacity tocreate with the will to destroy, the wisdom with the superstition.

We have exchanged the transcendental instinct of the Jews, who evenunder the worst possible conditions have always looked for a betterpeaceful world, for the suicide bomber. We have exchanged the prideof life for the fanatic obsession of death. Our death and that of ourchildren.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Norway: Shock over school reform plans

Teachers, students and experts have expressed widespread bafflement as to how proposed education program reforms can include a curriculum that ignores modern history. A key component in the draft national high school curriculum proposes replacing much Norwegian, European, world and modern history with digital presentations of the Viking age, the rise of the Roman Empire and the development of medieval China. Students already fear a knowledge gap filled by repetitive Power Point presentations on the same few subjects. The new program leaves out the world wars, the Russian Revolution, the Cold War, and does not mention the topics of Nazism or Communism. The world wars are potentially included under a clause that would allow teachers and students "to choose and examine two or more recent international conflicts, and assess cause and effect". The reform would further complicate the teaching of general education by reducing the number of hours of history to two hours a week. Criticism of the plan, and its bureaucratic formulation, has come from all quarters, and while Minister of Knowledge Øystein Djupedal has insisted that the reform process will be ready by January 2006 and in force by autumn next year, he has clearly registered the protests.

Paths Toward an Anti-Capitalist Liberation

In any nomination for "Most evil and inherently destructive ideology in human history", I think Islam would win. But Marxism doesn't make for a very bad second. Some at the People's Republic of Berkeley are worried that there is an attempt to "discredit Communism". Eh, wasn't that sort of done a long time ago? It's dead, but it won't lie down:

The balanced job complex is a redefinition of our concept of work. Basically, jobs are organized so that everyone has an equal set of both empowering and un-empowering tasks. Jobs are balanced within each work place and across work places. Balancing work across work places is equally necessary so that disempowering and menial work places are not ruled by empowering ones. The outcome of the participatory balanced job complex is that everyone has an equal share of both desirable and undesirable tasks, with comparable empowerment and quality of life circumstances for all. Another key element is remunerative justice, or pay for effort and sacrifice. This method of pay insures that unequal outcomes are not produced and reproduced, due to ownership of the means of production, bargaining power, output, genetic endowment, talent, skill, better tools, more productive coworkers, environment, inheritance, or luck. Of all these factors people control only their effort. So, effort and sacrifice is the remunerative norm in parecon, tempered by need as appropriate in cases of illness, catastrophe, incapacity, etc. Participants are organized into federations of workers and consumers councils who negotiate allocation through "decentralized participatory planning". Workers in worker councils propose what they want to produce, how much they want to produce, the inputs needed and the human effects of their production choices. Consumers propose what they want to consume, how much they want to consume and the human effects of their consumption choices.

"During the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution, he turned China into a cultural desert," she told the crowd at Haas. "He made torture public. My mother went through over a hundred of those denunciation meetings. She was made to kneel on broken glass and so on. China must be the most traumatized nation in the world." Halliday said Mao appealed to "a large group of fantasists" who gullibly thought he was the real thing. Halliday said Mao also attracted leftists who tolerated violence. Maoist intellectuals have counterattacked, saying the book negates any historical grounds for the Chinese revolution and positive changes in what had been a corrupt society before Mao's military victory in 1949. "It's just outrageous," said Gary Miller, a volunteer at Berkeley's Revolution Books, as he leafleted the authors' event on campus. "A lot of people look with a great deal of affection at the Mao years because China's been turned into one giant sweatshop." Raymond Lotta, a Chicago-based Maoist political economist and author, spoke to students at UCLA and UC Berkeley in what he called a bid to set the record straight. "What sets this apart from other historical studies is that this person Mao, who led an historic revolution and changed the landscape of China and was an inspiration throughout the world -- they're saying this was a scheming, bloodthirsty opportunist who was evil from the day he was born to the day he died and who hijacked a revolution," Lotta said. "I think it's part of a continuing attempt to discredit communism and Maoism and any alternative to the current world order."Mao Zedong: Sacred symbol and bloodiest mass killer

Every morning, as many as 20,000 people flock to Tiananmen Square to join the vast queues of pilgrims, often stretching a kilometre long, at the entrance to the tomb of Mao Zedong. Almost 30 years after his death, Mao remains the sacred symbol that China dare not touch. His massive portrait still looms above the entrance to the Forbidden City. His face is on every banknote in the country. Yet while he continues to be worshipped in China, a shocking new book has concluded that Mao was the bloodiest mass murderer in history, a sadistic thug who enjoyed torture and was willing to sacrifice half of China's population for his dream of global domination. The book estimates that Mao caused the deaths of 70 million people in peacetime, making him a far worse killer than Hitler or Stalin. It portrays him as a sociopath who loved killing and allowed millions of peasants to starve to death while he exported food to pay for his nuclear weapons; a man whose legendary achievements in the Long March were an invention; a man who turned China into a cultural desert of misery and violence, while maintaining dozens of luxury villas and a troupe of female sexual partners. China's rulers have acknowledged that Mao made some "serious mistakes," but only "in his old age." And they continue to praise him lavishly, decades after his death.

Malaysia investigates abuse claim

Malaysia has launched an inquiry after a video emerged which apparently shows a police officer humiliating an ethnic Chinese woman. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak said the incident was a severe blow to Malaysia's image. It follows a number of complaints against police by Chinese tourists. A Malaysian delegation is due to travel to China next week to mend relations between the two countries. The clip, thought to have been filmed on a mobile phone, appears to show the prisoner and a female police officer. The officer, who wears a Muslim headscarf, stands in front of the woman, who is forced to strip naked, grasp her ears and squat repeatedly. The pictures are accompanied by the sound of verses from the Koran being recited, although it is unclear if this would have been audible to the woman. Mr Azmi is due to fly to Beijing next Wednesday to placate the Chinese over the treatment of their tourists in Malaysia. There has been a marked drop in Chinese tourists visiting Malaysia since reports of the alleged abuses surfaced. A number of Chinese women have claimed they were forced to strip in Malaysian police stations while being spied upon. Malaysian immigration officers have also been accused of profiling young female Chinese visitors as would-be prostitutes.

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Witness: Prince had royal excuse: Claimed ‘diplomatic immunity’

A Saudi prince serving a year on the Vineyard for mowing down a Cambridge father with his SUV while drunk told police he didn’t have to take field sobriety tests because his royal status gave him diplomatic immunity, according to a witness interviewed by the Herald. “He said he can’t be arrested. He didn’t have to do the tests because he had diplomatic immunity,” said Angel Andino, one of three Boston Transportation Department employees who witnessed the 2:40 a.m. accident on Oct. 29, 2002. “He was all cocky about it like he was God or something or he was untouchable,” Andino said of Prince Bader Al-Saud, 23, who was permitted to choose the cushy Dukes County Jail on Martha’s Vineyard for his time. Andino, now a supervisor with the transportation department, said Al-Saud eventually submitted to the field tests on Charles Street. According to the police report, Al-Saud - who did not in fact have diplomatic immunity, or a valid driver’s license - failed two field sobriety tests and recorded a .12 reading on his breath test after striking Orlando Ramos, 37, with his BMW X5. The legal limit is .08.

Japanese Probe Collects First Sample from Asteroid Surface

The Japanese are bringing back samples from an asteroid, while a former Canadian Minister of Defence worries about the possibilites for intergalactic war. Personally, I think such an intergalactic "war" would be pretty one-sided. The aliens would blast Tokyo, Beijing, Paris and New York with their lasers, and the BBC would warn against racism and alienophobia, and recommend more welfare payments as a cure. Besides, the attacks took place because of years of human oppression and injustice against the planet Hdraka:

A Japanese spacecraft apparently succeeded in landing on an asteroid and collecting surface samples Saturday, part of an unprecedented mission to bring the material back to Earth, Japan's space agency said. The Hayabusa probe touched down for only a few seconds on the faraway asteroid _ long enough to collect powder from its surface _ and lifted off again to transmit data to mission controllers, said Kiyotaka Yashiro, a spokesman for JAXA, Japan's space agency. JAXA won't know if Hayabusa actually collected surface samples until it returns to Earth. It is expected to touch down in the Australian Outback in June 2007.

A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics -- relations with “ETs.” By “ETs,” Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

Four out of ten Muslim organisations in Sweden have been threatened, according to an investigation by Swedish Radio's Ekot programme. Three out of ten have been attacked, vandalised and damaged. Ekot interviewed 100 organisations which together represent 80,000 Muslims in Sweden. The abuse ranged from graffiti to attacks with fire bombs. Bejzat Becirov, who runs the Islamic Centre in Malmö, said that the mosque there receives threatening mail "almost every day". One example was a newspaper cutting showing vicitims of the recent earthquake in Pakistan. On it, someone had written "dead Muslims cannot come to Sweden". According to the responses from the 100 organisations, Muslim women who wear veils are particularly likely to be harassed and discriminated against.

An Islamic centre in Malmö says it is threatened with financial ruin after arson attacks earlier this year and in 2003. Now the centre’s insurance company has said it can no longer provide cover because of the risk of further attacks. Bejzat Becirov, the Chief Executive of the centre, has asked Prime Minister Göran Persson to help the mosque. Göran Persson visited the mosque during party rallying earlier this month and gave “half a promise” of financial support. He said the repeated attacks on the mosque show that Sweden “sadly has become a country with European norms”.

Muslims are exposed to the most racial harassment in Sweden, according to a new report from the Board of Integration. Seven out of ten reports of ethnic discrimination came from people with a Muslim background, and almost 40% of those questioned in the survey said they had witnessed verbal abuse directed at Muslims. "If you look at the whole period from 1999 to 2004 there has been a significant increase in the number of people who want to close Sweden's borders to immigration, from 35% to 45.5%," said the report's author, José Alberto Diaz.

Hugh Fitzgerald: What is being done about Muslim immigrants?

Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch asks what is being done about the immigration policies regarding Muslims in the USA, following the troubles in Europe. Well, not very much, as it seems. Pro-immigration advocates claim that we should let Muslims into the West because they are fleeing poverty and oppression. But as Ali Sina shows, poverty and oppression are caused by Islam and Islamic culture. As long as Muslims bring that culture with them here, we will end up being poor and oppressed, too:

We have a right to know: what is the INS doing about Muslim immigrants? Is it doing anything? Have any policies changed since 9/11/2001? What about since the seizure of the theatre in Moscow or the school in Beslan, with nearly 400 dead children and teachers? Have there been any changes since the killing, in Holland, of Pim Fortuyn? Of Theo van Gogh? Since the threats to kill Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders? What changes have been made in our immigration policies since the threats to the head of a Christian political party in Norway? Since the threats to a newspaper in Denmark? Since the virtual takeover of much of Malmo, Sweden, as a no-go for non-Muslims area? What changes in immigration policy have resulted from plans to bomb the Strasbourg Christmas market, or the Vatican, were foiled? What changes in immigration policy have followed upon the bombing of the subway in Madrid? The underground in London? What changes in immigration policy followed the three weeks of Muslim riots, in which a dozen churches were attacked and set ablaze, and tens of thousands of cars set on fire, and a Frenchman beaten to death, and others critically wounded, and cries of Allahu Akbar were heard all over the land? Any changes? Any?

If as he says, the way to overcome the misery of Muslims is to become even more Islamic, how can he explain the fact that the countries that are not Islamic at all are better than those that are Islamic? At which period in the history, Muslims were prosperous and productive? The only time they were prosperous was when they looted the wealth of other nations. When that loot ended, so did their prosperity. The question “what went wrong” is mute. It implies that there was a time that something was right! At what time anything was right in Islam doctor? Islam was wrong from the beginning. Islam is not sick. It is the sickness itself. You can’t cure Islam. You must overcome it and eradicate it. The cause of the poverty and ignorance of Muslims is Islam. It is the five times prayers, it is the one month fasting, it is the reading of the Quran instead of science, it is the wasting of people's time teaching them the Islamic way of defecation, urination and copulation, and it is observing all those stupid Islamic rituals that has made Muslims backward, lazy and poor.

The Myth of the Scandinavian Model

Why are the Scandinavian countries doing such a bad job, despite their Protestant work ethic and devotion to duty? The main cause is the essence of the nanny state: its very high tax level. Between 1990 and 2005 the average overall tax burden was 55% in Finland, 58% in Denmark and 61% in Sweden. This is almost one and a half times the OECD average. The difference between the wealth destructive Scandinavian model and the booming Irish alternative is obvious for all to see. Strangely enough, however, the French and German governments do not seem to notice. Those in Belgium do not, either. The Belgian government recently proposed a new policy plan inspired by the Danish model. The tax level is not reduced, the fiscal burden is not being shifted from production to consumption, but instead from one production factor (labour) to another (capital) which is already overburdened. 2004 witnessed a record world economic growth of 5%. China and India are booming, the US and Japan are recovering. Gwartney’s findings explain why continental West European countries, such as Belgium, did not see their economies grow. The Belgian tax burden is 9% higher than the OECD average and 15% higher than the tax level in the US and Japan. If continental Western Europe does not change its policies, its relative impoverishment today will soon turn into absolute pauperization.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Attacks Threaten Religious Harmony in Southeast Asia

Buddhist monks are being murdered, Christian schoolchildren beheaded and dissenters blown up. Southeast Asia's peaceful co-existence among religions is under siege, from Bangkok to Jakarta. Meanwhile, politicians and military leaders are using Islamic fervor to boost their own power. More than 1,000 people have been killed in southern Thailand in the past two years in clashes involving the military, Muslims and Buddhist settlers. But the slaughtering of monks by Muslim holy warriors -- that was a first. It brings with it an unmistakable message: that dedicated jihadists who have been committing acts of terror in Southeast Asia for years have now set their sights on this primarily Buddhist country. The region's image of peaceful co-existence among more than 200 million Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus -- a peaceful co-existence among vastly different religions from Indonesia to Burma, which has made Southeast Asia a model of tolerance -- now exists only in tourism ads. Terror is everywhere.

Photos of Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Copenhagen, Denmark

Ayaan Hirsi Ali visited Copenhagen, Denmark, this week, to meet with members of the Danish Free Press Society. Here she is seen with Danish Islam-critics Lars Hedegaard (left) and Helle Merete Brix, authors of several books and countless articles about Islam in Europe, and participants in the Internet Magazine Sappho as well as other websites such as Sharia.dk.

Neither The Danish Film Institute nor the film producer Zentropa [which is behind many notable films such as the ones directed by Lars von Trier] would have any problems supporting or producing a controversial film about the prophet Muhammed based on a manuscript by the Dutch politician and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The Somalian-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali has told the Internet magazine Sappho that she is prepared to produce an Islamic version of the famous Monty Python film "The Life of Brian" -- with Muhammed as the main character instead of Jesus -- in Denmark, and that she could finish a script very quickly.

....

The Director of The Danish Film Institute, Henning Camre, does not anticipate any problems allocating public money for a film with this content.

"I have only read about it in Jyllands-Posten, but if she writes a manuscript and finds a Danish producer, we will treat her application just like any other. We have no limitations on freedom of speech in Denmark. ... So far, however, it appears to be rather offhand and unspecified. For example, what language would be used? And would it be interesting from a Danish perspective if it was not made in Danish? This raises some questions, but as a starting point we would have no problems investing money in it from a free speech point of view," says Henning Camre.

Nor is Peter Aalbæk Jensen, CEO of Zentropa, frightened by the thought of producing a critical film about the prophet Muhammed.

"We make all kinds of films from the far left to the far right. It is our film directors who decide the contents, and we have no other position than that there is room for everything. If a director wants to make a film that praises Osama bin Laden, we will make that too," says Peter Aalbæk Jensen.

-- If Hirsi Ali comes to you with a manuscript for a controversial Muhammed film, would you make it?

"Yes, if we could find a willing director. ..."

Screen writer and teacher at The Danish Film School, Mogens Rukov [the man behind many internationally successful Danish films], thinks that the film ought to be made.

"... My position is that there is nothing that cannot be done because some people feel offended. The entire middle class is obsessed with fear and polite deference to all kinds of fascism, but we should not let ourselves be influenced by that. ..."

France: Sarkozy Joins the Blogosphere Debate?

A great deal of excitement has been generated on the French blogosphere, both in English and in French. It seems that Nicolas Sarkozy, Minister of the Interior and President-in-Waiting-if-that-dastardly-Villepin-does-not-beat-him has become involved in a blog discussion with the Kassowitz, a cinéaste. This, as our French colleagues point out, is going beyond the sort of silly self-promotion that the fragrant Margot is indulging in. This is the beginnings of a serious political debate. Will our politicians learn to to do the same?

Turkish ruling party cracks down on alcohol

Turkey's Islamist-rooted governing party has begun a crackdown on alcohol in the local districts it controls, in a move which has sparked heavy criticism in the majority Muslim, though strictly secular, EU candidate country. Justice and Development Party (AKP) mayors in Ankara, the capital and symbol of the Turkish secular republic, have banned alcohol from local government cafes and restaurants citing a need to protect family values. They are also refusing to issue new sales licences, while extensions to existing permits are getting bogged down in interminable bureaucratic delays. Istanbul saw the beginnings of a similar ban in local government establishments some 10 years ago, when the current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected as mayor of the country's largest city. In government since 2003, Erdogan now disowns his Islamist past and has embraced Turkey's bid to join the European Union. Pro-secular groups and the liberal press have condemned the mayors' anti-alcohol drive as incompatible with the values of the Turkish secular state and of those of the EU, in particular after the opening last month of official membership negotiations with the bloc. The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) said it believed the ban would spread quickly throughout Turkey and said it went against individual liberties espoused in the EU project, so dear to the Turkish government. "This is a creeping ban and it will spread throughout the country," the CHP's Sefik Zengin told parliament

Eurabian Union Wants More Action Against Islamophobia

A new report from the EU's racism watchdog says Europe must do more to combat racism. The problem is, "Islamophobia" has been included as a form of racism in the EU. New anti-discrimination laws to combat Islamophobia are to be enacted, and already have been in Norway, where Norwegians need to mount proof of their own innocence if Muslim immigrants accuse them of discrimination in any form, including discriminatory speech:

Europe must do more to combat racism and xenophobia and work to end discrimination in employment, housing and education, the EU's racism watchdog said on Wednesday. In a report presented to the European Parliament in Brussels, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) said that Roma gypsies and Muslims were especially targeted. "Muslim groups face particularly challenging conditions in many member states," said the report, which assessed developments in 2004 across the 25 EU member states. The authors recommend the full implementation of EU anti-discrimination laws, national employment strategies to target minorities, more equitable access to education and housing and a crackdown on racist incidents.

Anti-Islamism has been included in the text as a “dangerous inclination” that has to be fought against upon the insistence of Turkey at the summit that 46 Council members attended. The 3rd Council of Europe summit has for the first time mentioned "Islamophobia" in the 9th paragraph of the Warsaw Declaration that was accepted on Tuesday, May 17. The Council has reached the following decisions regarding the issue: Condemnation of any kind of intolerance and discrimination based on gender, race and religious beliefs in particular, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, the fight against these within the framework of the Council of Europe and the use of effective mechanisms and rules to combat these problems. Thus, anti-Islamism as well as anti-Semitism will be dealt with within the framework of legal proceedings. The Council reports will include anti-Islamist movements. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) will closely monitor these movements.

Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, in 2005 passed a new Discrimination Act. The act says in pretty clear words that in cases of suspected direct or indirect discrimination due to religion or ethnicity, Norwegians are guilty until proven otherwise. The act was passed in April with the approval of all parties in parliament, more than 80 % of MPs, with the sole exception of the right-wing Progress Party. Immigration spokesman for the Progress Party, Per Sandberg, is deeply disappointed and fears the consequences of the new legislation. "This law will jeopardize the rights of ordinary, law-abiding Norwegian citizens. The principle of reverse burden of proof means that Norwegians are guilty of discrimination unless they can prove otherwise. It will lead to many convictions of innocent people. Reverse burden of proof is also combined with liability to pay compensation, which means that innocent persons risk having to pay huge sums for things they didn't do." "Anti-racist" organizations are given a significant role in the new law. There is a new, state-sponsored Equality Ombudsman who will be responsible for enforcing it, and coerce all employers who refuse to abide by it. A multicultural Inquisition, in other words. Cabinet minister Erna Solberg, who has earlier called for the establishment of a sharia council in Norway, proposed the new act.

This law could open the floodgates for all kinds of unreasonable demands from Muslim immigrants in particular, who will be given a licence for extortion of employers, courtesy of the Norwegian parliament. For instance, it is likely that they can now claim that it is “discrimination” if they don’t have a special prayer room provided. Already, Muslim taxi drivers demand a separate prayer room at Oslo Airport, where they can pray during working hours, but have received a negative answer. The leader of the Somali Taxi Association, Ali Hassan, finds this discriminating and unacceptable, and is planning a law suit over the matter: "We think we have a right to pray during working hours. We demand to get a room where we can perform prayers, without losing our spot in the taxi queue." At the same time as this is going on, blind people with their guide dogs are finding it increasingly difficult to get a taxi ride in the Oslo region, where Muslims make up a high percentage of cab drivers.

The following is the text to one of the songs sung at the tv-transmitted kongress of the new Swedish party Feminist Alternative (source: Federley):

Old, dirty man, accursed manDestroys our world without any shameRapes, wages wars, fights and destroysGet that you cant and shouldntGrab my pussy when you get hornyOr grab my breasts when you lustI hate you, you accursed manYou think you know, You think you canAll about women, all about our livesBut you know nothing, so take a f*cking stepTo the side, to the edge, place yourself at the edgeFall over it, I dont give a f*ck´Cause now its our turnThis is our revengeWe will show youNow we take our chanceYou gave yourself the role of god, so f*cking pathetic,Yes, so you have a d*ck, is that reason enough to force an ideal upon meFor your own benefit and own f*cking pleasureI´ll show you that I can, better than youEven though I am a "small, weird girl"Old, dirty man, accursed manBetter start jumpingBecause here you see a womanThat hates you so muchWe will tear you apart

The party, according to the polls I have seen, may attain 6-10% of the vote at the next Swedish elections.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Wants to Make a Muslim "Life of Brian" - in Denmark

Disturbing questions about the massive muslim presence in Europe are becoming more urgent by the day: It it possible to integrate muslims to become part of Europe? Will we have a liberal version of islam? And if not, what is there to look forward to? Civil war? Dissolution? An islamic take-over? If your head is full of such nagging thoughts, it is a solace to meet Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the liberal Dutch politician and originally muslim immigrant from Somalia. Since the murder of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, for whose strongly islam-critical film "Submission I" Ms. Ali wrote the script, Hirsi Ali between the two journalists Lars Hedegaard and Helle Merete Brix she has been under constant police protection. That was also the case when Sappho.dk interviewed her during her recent visit to Copenhagen.

But in spite of death threats and constant vilification the slender woman has by no means lost heart. She still waxes eloquent when she talks about the issue that concerns her the most: The defence of European civil rights and particularly freedom of expression. Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes across as a genuinely European intellectual of the kind that is becoming increasingly rare as our home-grown cultural personalities and opinion leaders are buzily discarding our intellectual heritage.

- You have said that you would like to make a muslim "Life of Brian"."Yes, Muhammed is a much more colourful personality than Jesus. Such a film could be a learning instrument for muslims. There are some islamic films but they don't show the image of Muhammed and they are not really about him. They are more about how islam was established. I would really like to make a critical film about him. I could write a script very quickly."

- Would you make it in Denmark? We have a Film Institute financed by the state which would probably be prepared to fund an exciting and controversial film."All they have to do is to give me ring, and I'll come."

Denmark: Immigrant suffrage at risk

The heading at the Copenhagen Post is misleading: We are not dealing with immigrants, but with non-citizens. In Denmark, and in Scandinavia in general, non-citizens are allowed to vote in local/municipal (but not national) elections after living in the country for about three years. I find this practice profoundly undemocratic, and it is starting to become a real problem in major Scandinavian cities. In Pakistan, "floor switching" is very common, meaning that you are elected as candidate for one party, and then switch party after the election if somebody else gives you "a better deal". A nice term for corruption:

Anger over an immigrant politician's decision to switch parties right after last week's local election has the Liberal Party, Denmark's largest party and the party of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, considering ways to exclude non-citizens from local elections, regional daily Fyens Stiftstidene reported on Wednesday. The party has previously been a supporter of the rule allowing foreign citizens living in Denmark to vote and run in municipal elections after three years of residence. 'We've got some very permissive regulations in this area, and we should consider whether we should demand Danish citizenship in order to participate in local elections, just as it is in national elections,' said Liberal spokesman for municipal issues, Leif Mikkelsen. The sudden change of attitude comes on the heels of revelations that a Liberal city counsellor in Copenhagen, Wallait Khan, had simultaneously run for election in Copenhagen and in his native country of Pakistan. In addition to running - and losing - the race for vice mayor, Khan has also drawn attention to himself by switching parties immediately after the 15 November municipal elections in Denmark. Khan's switch was crucial in determining the make up of the leadership of the council. Khan pointed out that he was not the only Danish resident running for office in Pakistan.

The revelation failed to sit well with a number of political parties, and some are nearing the position taken by the right-wing Danish People's Party, which has been the only party to support a rule change to exclude non-citizens from local elections. Supporters of non-citizen voting rights have called them a good tool for foreigners to learn about Denmark's democratic traditions. Social Liberal Party municipal affairs spokesman Ole Glahn said he was shaken by the Liberals' new stance. 'Using a single instance like this one to exclude all non-citizens from municipal elections is too much. This says a lot about how much the Liberals have come under the influence of the Danish People's Party,' Glahn said, referring to the alliance between the minority coalition government and the Danish People's Party. The Liberals' governing partner, the Conservatives, was also against preventing non-citizens from voting. 'We've already made it more difficult to become a citizen. Should we also take away immigrants' ability to influence local issues like schools and nursing homes?' asked Conservative municipal issues spokesman Christian Wedell-Neergaard.

Wallait Khan, a renegade councillor whose defection from the Liberal Party secured left-of-centre parties a dominating position in Copenhagen after last week's local elections, has raised eyebrows for pursuing a political career in Pakistan as well as Denmark. Khan was elected councillor for the Liberal Party in Copenhagen on Tuesday, only to defect two days later to join the Socialist People's Party. His decision allowed Social Democratic mayor-to-be Ritt Bjerregaard to form a coalition with the Socialists. "We Pakistanis in Europe have a competition between ourselves,' he said. 'We in Denmark compete with Pakistanis living in Norway and England about who holds most mayor posts."

Foreigners should be Danish citizens to be allowed to vote in the local elections this autumn, The Danish People's Party (DF) said on Tuesday. The party's proposal would block up to 200,000 immigrant votes. In this way, the party hopes to stop the advancement of the Radical Liberal Party, which almost doubled its mandates in the parliamentary elections last February, according to daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten. 'Let's be honest. The Radicals are not just café latte-sipping people from the creative class. To a large degree, it is also largely composed of immigrants, and one could fear the result of the upcoming local elections in large cities, where there are large concentrations of immigrants that the Social Liberals pander to,' said DF leader Pia Kjærsgaard. Immigrants from outside the EU and the Nordic countries gain voter rights in local elections after living in Denmark for three years.

East Asia allies doubt U.S. could win war with China

Yes, I do know that Ishihara is a nationalist, not to mention one of the most racist politicians I know of anywhere. But his views here are shared by quite a few in Asia. Some think that China's war against the USA has already begun, mainly through proxies such as North Korea and, increasingly, Iran, and quietly watching while Islamic terrorists wear down American military strength and resolve. Not to mention that they have huge stakes in the US economy, but that goes both ways, of course:

The overwhelming assessment by Asian officials, diplomats and analysts is that the U.S. military simply cannot defeat China. It has been an assessment relayed to U.S. government officials over the past few months by countries such as Australia, Japan and South Korea. Most Asian officials have expressed their views privately. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has gone public, warning that the United States would lose any war with China. "In any case, if tension between the United States and China heightens, if each side pulls the trigger, though it may not be stretched to nuclear weapons, and the wider hostilities expand, I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives," Mr. Ishihara said. "Therefore, we need to consider other means to counter China," he said. "The step we should be taking against China, I believe, is economic containment." Asian allies of the United States are quietly preparing to bolster their militaries independent of Washington. So far, the Bush administration has been strongly opposed to an indigenous Japanese defense capability, fearing it would lead to the expulsion of the U.S. military presence from that country.Japan ends 60-year military exclusion

JAPAN will once again have a "military" in name 60 years after the United States stripped it of the right to keep armed forces. It is the first revision of the post-World War II constitution. The draft, which has already been made public, was formally presented at the Liberal Democratic Party's 50th anniversary event yesterday. The move may raise tensions with neighbouring countries, which accuse Japan of not atoning for past aggression. Other than in name, Japan already has one of the world's best funded "militaries," devoting close to $60 billion to defence a year.

China's overwhelming ambition is to become an economic superpower. Everything takes second place to this goal, not least the well-being of the people laboring toward it. Yet waves of willing workers continue to deluge the country's industrial regions. Here, in China, the corporations of the world have found a bottomless reservoir of cheap workers. Here they can operate largely unfettered by all those niggling social benefits: high wages, well-paid overtime, occupational health and safety regulations, maternity leave, free trade unions, and the right to strike. About 800 million Chinese live out in the rural areas, and an estimated one-sixth do not have work. That's why they bow to the fate of wage slavery for a few years -- in hopes of a brighter future. Few of them have electricity or running water in their villages back home. The abundance of cheap goods "Made in China" may well quicken the pulses of Western bargain hunters. But few consumers are aware of the price they will pay for this windfall: the loss of their own prosperity and, increasingly, of their own jobs.

A top prosecutor in Henan province was recently stripped of his post and Communist Party membership after investigators alleged that he embezzled $2 million to support his lavish lifestyle — and seven mistresses. "Everyone is saying, 'Behind every corrupt official, there must be at least one mistress,' " says Li Xinde, an anti-corruption activist. China's economic boom has led to a revival of the 2-millennium-old tradition of "golden canaries," so called because, like the showcase birds, mistresses here are often pampered, housed in love nests and taken out at the pleasure of their "masters." Concubines were status symbols in imperial China. After the Communists took power, they sought to root out such bourgeois evils, even as Chairman Mao Tse-tung reportedly kept a harem of peasant women into his old age. Now, mistresses have become a must-have for party officials, bureaucrats and businessmen. "We are in a commodity economy," says retired Shanghai University sociologist Liu Dalin. "Work, technology, love, beauty, power — it's all tradable."

Ugly Images of Asian Rivals Become Best Sellers in Japan

East Asia is a region full of love, isn't it? China wants to invade Taiwan, North Korea wants to nuke pretty much everybody, Japanese don't like Chinese or South Koreans, South Koreans hate Japanese, Chinese hate South Koreans, Vietnamese, Vietnamese don't like Chinese. Everyone hates the Japanese. And second to the West, this is the most important economic region on the planet. Who knows, with their economic rivalries and their fierce nationalism, which remind me of Europe pre-WW1, maybe they can manage to stage a major war entirely without the help of Muslims? If so, will they destroy each other, the way Europeans did?

A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of." In another comic book, "Introduction to China," which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive." The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months. In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia. Today, China and South Korea's rise to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here. The comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan's conflicted identity, its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and of inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features. That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most Japanese are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided that the best way to stop Western imperialists from reaching here was to emulate them.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Swedish girls design anti-rape belt

A group of Swedish teenage girls has designed a belt that requires two hands to remove and which they hope will deter would-be rapists, one of the creators told AFP on Tuesday. "It's like a reverse chastity belt," one of the creators, 19-year-old Nadja Björk, told AFP, meaning that the wearer is in control, instead of being controlled. The military-style buckle has a latch that the wearer has to move through a labyrinth into the correct position in order to unlock the belt. "You need two hands to open it, so the rapist can't hold you down and open it at the same time. It takes a while to figure it out if you don't know what you're doing," she said. The product was designed as part of a high school project in entrepreneurship and the girls have already sold 300 of the belts in Sweden, priced at 150 kronor. Björk and one of her partners now plan to start a business to mass produce the belts and are currently in negotiations with potential partners. "But I'm not doing this for the money," she said. "I'm really passionate about stopping rape. I think it's terrible." The Swedish media have in recent months given wide and descriptive coverage to rape attacks, though experts' opinions vary on whether there has been an actual rise in the number of such crimes.Murder believed to be 'honour killing'

Swedish prosecutors on Tuesday requested that a couple and their two teenage children be remanded in custody on suspicion of murdering a man who wanted to marry their daughter, in what is believed to be an honour killing. The mother, father, 17-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter in the family of Afghan origin who live in Högsby, southern Sweden, "are all suspected" of participating in the murder of the daughter's boyfriend Abbas Rezai, prosecutor Kjell Yngvesson told AFP. He said the girl's brother had confessed to the crime, but that he was still requesting that all four family members be remanded in custody. "For the time being they are all suspects," he said, adding that it was possible the boy had confessed to shield his family. According to media reports, the 16-year-old girl, whose identity was not revealed, was secretly engaged to Rezai, a 20-year-old student also of Afghan origin, but her family had wanted her to marry a cousin living in Denmark. She reportedly ran away from home when she learned of her parents' wedding plans for her, but after a month the young couple was lured back to the family home in southern Sweden last week with promises that they would be permitted to marry. Rezai was found stabbed to death in the family home last Friday. Yngvesson would not confirm outright that the four were suspected of an honour killing, but said "it is not impossible".

Muslim Terrorists Swimming in Saudi Money

The Saudi infiltration of American Islam has been as frighteningly quiet as it has been pervasive. Virtually every imam at an American mosque is a Wahhabi -- Saudi trained, funded, and vetted -- a religious leader who promotes a virulent brand of fundamentalist Islam with the ultimate aim of imposing Shari'a law upon the non-Moslem world. Even more frightening, our prison system is staffed by Moslem chaplains who are products of Saudi training. As a consequence, anti-American Islamofascist ideology is being taught to some of the most dangerous, unstable, and violent members of American society. Meanwhile, the mosques continue to beat the drums for anti-Israeli causes including fundraising for groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other terror outfits.Egypt Copts sound alarm over Islamist advance

Egypt's Christian Coptic minority voiced concern over the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood Monday, after the still illegal Islamist opposition group made impressive gains in parliamentary elections. "I am sounding the bell to warn Egyptians that if the Muslim Brothers come to power, Egypt will be an Islamic state, like Iran or Sudan," said prominent Coptic thinker Milad Hanna. The Brotherhood claimed it had won another 13 seats in the second phase of the three-stage elections, adding to the record 34 seats they won in the first, and stood to win more seats in second-round run-offs. "Had these elections been fair and transparent, maybe the Muslim Brothers would have won a majority," Hanna said, in reference to reports of widespread fraud, voter intimidation and violence from ruling party thugs. The domination by President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party is not at risk but it will for the first time have to face a substantial challenge in the People's Assembly if the Muslim Brothers make further gains.

"I was always friendly with the Muslim Brothers," said Hanna, 81. "My aim was to prevent conflicts, notably in small villages, so that Coptic minorities are not wiped out. Now I sense that the political map is changing. "The day the Muslim Brothers win more than 50 percent, the rich Copts will leave the country and the poorer Copts will stay, maybe some of them will be converted... I hope I will die before this happens." So far only one Copt, NDP heavyweight and finance minister Yusef Butros-Ghali, has won a seat. The Copts claim to account for around 10 percent of Egypt's population of 73 million and have consistently complained of under-representation and marginalisation.US Reaching Out to Muslim Brotherhood: Report

The State Department believes that Washington can contain the group and its ilk through dialogue. The memo, according to the Western diplomatic sources, maintains that it is about time that the administration looked differently at religious groups and avoided any further clash with them, because this would only fan hatred and incite more attacks against US interests. They added that the State Department has asked the US Embassy in Cairo to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood's leaders as a preliminary step for an organized dialogue. The memo recommends that after reaching common understandings with the Muslim Brotherhood, Washington should pressure the Egyptian government to let the group members speak out their minds freely and play a role on the country's political landscape.